Politics. Sex. Science. Art. You know, the good stuff.

Stephanie Zvan is an analyst by trade, but she's paid not to talk about it. She is also the associate president of Minnesota Atheists and one of the hosts for their radio show and podcast, Atheists Talk. She speaks on science and skepticism in a number of venues, including science fiction and fantasy conventions.

Stephanie has been called a science blogger and a sex blogger, but if it means she has to choose just one thing to be or blog about, she's decided she's never going to grow up. In addition to science and sex and the science of sex, you'll find quite a bit of politics here, some economics, a regular short fiction feature, and the occasional bit of concentrated weird.

Oh, and arguments. She sometimes indulges in those as well. But I'm sure everything will be just fine. Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.

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Low-Information Harassers

I should really be working on a blog post for one of the people who’s donated to get me to Women in Secularism 3. I should really be applying for jobs. Instead, I woke up to a bunch of people I had blocked in my Twitter mentions. Here was my morning.

Comments

It’s a good thing this movement doesn’t have any ridiculous vindictive people who choose their friends based on who kisses their ass harder at any particular time. And who will openly embrace people who metaphorically crapped all over them in the past and would do so again if it were convenient for them to do so, only because the other side wasn’t making everything sufficiently all about them.

Oh look, it’s dim “free marketeers” who think that asking for donations, or fundraising by performing tasks for the donors, is in violation of free market ideas. I bet xe thinks Kickstarter is communism.

The other day someone at a conference complained to me that my twitfeed is a one-way channel, and I’m not properly using the medium (he said “respecting”) because I don’t dialogue with my followers, or follow anyone else. When I read stuff like the above, I feel completely vindicated.

I know that if twitter wasn’t around it’d be taking place on facebook, or someplace else (perhaps without the mandatory character limit to ensure incoherent soundbites) but, ugh, if that’s the kind of crap that’s on twitter I wonder if I want to be associated with it at all.

Aren’t these the same people who go on and on about how you and other FtB folks don’t do “real” activism because you only ever write blog posts instead of getting out into the “real world”?

Their general strategy is to portray the “FTBullies” as exemplifying whichever extreme is most convenient at the time. Hence the “fact” that FTB is either in unthinking lockstep agreement, or tearing itself apart through vicious infighting. And that FTB are either a marginalized irrelevance, or are destroying the movement. The “FTBullies are useless slacktivists” trope is difficult to apply at this moment, and so it’s been temporarily withdrawn. It will no doubt be back a few days after the conference ends.

It bothers me more than it should that these Dunning-Kruger posterkids call a conference featuring the likes of Katha Pollit, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Rebecca Goldstein a “coffee klatsch.” I’ve no doubt they don’t know who those women are (yet would piss themselves for a chance to hear such intellectual mediocrities as Michael Shermer or Penn Jillette speak for the hundredth time at some skeptical-con-or-other.)